


So?

by thumos (Demidea)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, M/M, Murder, more of a memory, not ship exactly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 02:53:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14251518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demidea/pseuds/thumos
Summary: Empathetic (adj.)-of, relating to, or characterized by empathy, the psychological identification with the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of others.Jesse likes to think he understands why he was special. Why, out of all of Deadlock, Reyes chose him. He likes to think he's different from all the rabble he helps Reyes scrape from the sole of the earth. He likes to. Doesn't mean he does.





	So?

**Author's Note:**

> A short character piece inspired by the image of being a former grunt "rescued" and put to work killing other grunts. Also I love Gabriel Reyes and Jesse McCree? I love them?

Jesse’s gun hand drops, ramrod straight at his side. Peacekeeper clatters on the concrete floor next his boot, drawing every stare in the room. Reyes waves, and all the others look away, back to the task at hand. Reyes approaches, planting himself tall slightly to Jesse’s left, avoiding the encroaching puddle of blood from Jesse’s latest victim.

“What’s eating you, kid?”

Jesse doesn’t lift his gaze from the puddle. “He was eighteen.”

“So?”

“I killed him.”

“This your first time?” Reyes asks, dry as the desert he dug Jesse from. They both know it’s not, but the implication that Jesse’s green screws Jesse’s mouth down, his temple twitching.

“ _I_  was eighteen.”

In the silence that stretches between them, Jesse is intimately aware of the noises the other agents are making: the scrapes of bodies on concrete, of squeegees and of the chemical sprays: all hard at work doing what he should be helping with. Instead, he’s pouting. After the silence becomes painful, Reyes speaks, a single, supremely bored syllable.

“So?”

Jesse does look up now, fire in his eyes. Reyes doesn’t even flinch. “So why is he dead, and I’m not?”

Reyes tilts his forehead back, considering Jesse with a cool interest while looking down his nose. “You could’ve been.”

“But?”

“You aren’t.” Jesse’s expression must clearly indicate that isn’t a good enough answer, because Reyes throws his shoulders up with an exasperated eye roll/shrug combo. “But I offered you a deal, and you said yes.”

When Reyes’ eyes complete that roll, they fall back on Jesse’s, silently asking  _Happy?_

Not quite. Jesse nods toward the cooling body on the floor. “Think he woulda said yes, too?”

“Maybe.” And this is why Reyes is the one Jesse will follow to his grave: he’s rock solid despite the chaos around them. Unyielding, unforgiving of the circumstance, completely rooted in his personal morals where Morrison, though unstoppable, will shift like the tide, his actions influenced by gravities Jesse can’t see. “But given the opportunity? I think he would’ve shot you first.” Reyes reaches out this time, clasping Jesse’s shoulder, looking him eye to eye, man to man. “And you didn’t let him.”

 And just like that, Jesse made the right decision. His shoulders relax, his jaw clenches, and he holds Reyes’ gaze, nodding. A glimmer of approval causes Gabe’s beard to twitch, but then he’s turning away, back to the job at hand. “Now pick up your gun. I taught you better than that.”


End file.
